The impact of mental health-related social media posts on young adults' mental health reporting: A two-study experimental investigation

The prevalence inflation hypothesis suggests the rise in mental health awareness efforts is contributing to increased reports of common mental health problems. However, few experimental studies have tested this. In this paper, two experimental studies are described (N = 271, N = 611) with UK-based young adults aged 18–24 years old. Participants were either exposed to Instagram posts from UK mental health charities, which normalised and shared relevant psychoeducational information about mental health problems in general (Experiment 1) or anxiety disorders exclusively (Experiment 2), or to Instagram posts from UK cycling charities (the control group). Relative to the control, exposure to mental health or anxiety-related content predicted significantly higher state and trait anxiety and a wider concept breadth of mental disorder whilst adjusting for gender and baseline outcomes. Exploratory analyses found those with higher baseline trait anxiety were more sensitive to the effects of exposure on state anxiety but less sensitive to the effects of exposure on concept breadth of mental disorder. Noting small effect sizes, these findings indicate that brief exposure to mental health awareness efforts can affect in-the-moment anxiety and how young adults view symptoms within themselves and others. Mental health awareness efforts may therefore be one factor contributing to increased reports of mental health problems. Future research should examine who is susceptible to these effects and to what extent this is a helpful or unhelpful phenomenon.